The Sound of Glass
by SapSorrow
Summary: She was a girl from the Capitol, he was a tribute from District 12. It was always going to be interesting. Haffie, the story before the Hunger Games. Romance, some humour, gets explicit in later chapters. Trigger warnings for substance abuse, because this is Haymitch we're talking about.
1. Chapter 1

**1.**

"Huh? What?" Haymitch peered at the boy in disbelief, tired belief, and not a small amount of awkward disgust; "Run that one by me again."

"I'm in love with her," he repeated – "She's – indescribable – and I could never be good enough for her. I certainly couldn't kill her."

"Oh Christ," Haymitch groaned, sinking further into the soft leather of the couch that was feeling increasingly soft and somehow dizzying the further the train progressed towards the Capitol.

"She's everything to me-" Peeta was still talking, though Haymitch had long since face-palmed heavily and kept the hand over his face in weariness. He tried not to listen, tried not to relate to the boy's babbling on and on about how wonderful she was, how much better than him she was, how she was in another league from him; another world even, he could never begin to compare or even comprehend.

"Oh god, please stop." It came out of Haymitch's mouth before he could stop it and he knew what the boy would do next before he did it. He _did _stop talking, almost immediately, he looked down sadly, not even as angry as he probably ought to be, and just said sadly to the floor –

"I guess you wouldn't understand."

"No" he lied, drawling through his teeth – "I guess I really wouldn't."

_Kid, _he though heavily, _you have no idea._

_By damn you have no idea._

_x_

"Manners Cost Nothing," her mother told her – "Don't be too clever, nobody wants to hear your opinions, it's your duty to us all just to be pretty, smile and be nice, smile for the cameras, smile, smile, smile!"

The rounds of instruction were endless and repetitive and they never seemed to make any sense. One day she overheard her mother say despairingly – "I wish she'd just been born a fool. A pretty little fool, the best thing a girl can be in this world."

At twelve years old she peered into the mirror, scrunching up her face, trying to see where the fault could lie.

"I think I'm kinda pretty," she said uncertainly – "I think my hair looks nice."

"Effie, don't be ridiculous" her mother would sigh, sweeping in on a wave of rustling frills and glittering superiority – "Try this new colour- and that make up I got you last week."

She looked back in the mirror when her mother was done and gone, and cried when she did not recognise herself. Mascara ran down her cheeks, turning her vision ugly.

-x-

"There must be more than this," she said a year later, and her mother's exasperation knew no bounds;

"What more could you want?"

Effie stared peevishly out across the city and could not find the words to explain it. Something about cages. Her insides balled up in frustration.

"The Capitol _is _everything," her mother pressed on – "Everything you need concern yourself with."

-x-

"Take a child with me, are you mad?" she overheard her parents arguing that night – "To _District twelve? _For the quarter quell? – do you _hear _yourself?"

"She's _your _child. And yes, how else is she going to stop talking about how great the rest of the world must be unless you show her otherwise?"

"She's not ready."

She heard her father laugh nastily;

"Tell that to the kids in the games."

The familiar chink of decanter against glass, her father shifting in his leather chair, her mother's voice rising high to start screeching.

-x-

And in the end –

"Pack your bags," her mother said. "This year I'm taking you to Twelve."

Effie leaped and whooped for excitement until she was shouted at.

"Thank you!" she breathed. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"Thank your father, not me – in fact, don't thank me at all."

Effie, looking quizzical, with the slight frown she was not supposed to make, wondered if her mother was ever so slightly drunk.

-x-

The whole train journey, she never took her eyes from the window as the world beyond the city unfolded, falling out like the pleats in an elaborate new skirt. Folds and seams of land tumbled before her awestruck eyes and she could not sit still for joy at how big the world was turning out to be. She could have spread out her arms and flown across it. This was better than skyscrapers and even sequins. Better than the yearly thrill of watching the Hunger Games on TV. This was the most immense thing she had ever seen and it was brilliant, wonderful and terrifying all at once.

When the train pulled into District Twelve she stared in increasing horror at the people she saw beyond the window.

"Mother, what's wrong with them?"

"Ignore them dear, they're – they're not people the same way we are."

Effie could not really see – beyond the awful clothes and the skinniness – that there was any real difference in people themselves but she was learning not to say such things that were probably wrong of her so instead she said, pouting,

"I don't like it."

"Then stay on the train."

She supposed she was a coward, but the people looked back at them with such hostility, one man, his face black with coal dust, actually spitting on the platform beside their carriage, that she nodded and shrank down into her seat when her mother left the train. It made no sense, any of it, the look of these people's eyes and the way they did not seem as pleased to see them as her mother had told her. Told her they welcomed the sight of Capitol people in their dull little lives; that they would be in awe of them. Effie could not help but think that it did not look like awe.

-x-

She supposed she must have fallen asleep, and for a while, because she woke up and it was dark. The train was moving again, slower now and back, she could only guess, towards the Capitol. She had been told the return journey would take a few days so the tributes could be prepared on the way. The Tributes! It gave her a thrill of excitement; there were twice as many this year, for the Quarter Quell, and she so wanted to see them.

She supposed her mother had just forgotten she existed again, and so she made her way intently down the warm, dimly lit train towards the dining car and in one of the sleeping cars she was arrested by the sound of someone crying. She had never heard another person cry before – _smile, _she was always told – they all were told – smile even if you cannot bear it, smile if your heart is breaking.

The door was open just a crack. None of them locked properly – _just in case _– her mother said, but she would not say in case of what. She nudged it open with her toe and stared at the boy, fascinated. He did not see her at first, back to the door and head down, sat on a chair that looked far too delicate for him. She frowned minutely and cocked her head to one side like a bird –

"Why are you crying?" she asked, and her voice sounded shrill in her ears. The boy twisted round, startled, angrily brushing at his face with a sleeve.

"Not crying," he grunted, though there were clear tracks of clean cutting through his face – "Go away."

She wrinkled her nose and ignored this.

"You smell bad," she pronounced – "And you look terrible."

"Well shit, now all my other problems seem so small and pesky."

"I don't –" she began, appalled and delighted to have heard such language aloud for the first time – "I cannot believe you just spoke to me like that."

The boy gave a grunt that, under any other circumstances, might have been a laugh;

"Get used to it, princess."

"You're so _rude!" _she squeaked – "Why?"

"Well I suppose you'd be a little testy too, if you'd just been selected for a messy televised death."

"You're – you're a Tribute?" Her eyes went wide, she could not help but pronounce the word with something rather like reverence.

"Christ. Fuck off."

"I've never met a Tribute before."

"And you won't meet me again either. Congrats."

"You – you _could _win."

"Yeah. Right. Jesus, stop smiling like that, you're killing me."

She supposed she _had _been smiling; she had rather hoped it had been winningly, the way she saw her mother flirt and flounce when talking to boys.

"I never talked to a boy before," she admitted out loud, following her own train of thought.

"That's nice for them." He stood up, ignoring her a little too carefully for it to quite wash, as he flopped over to the bed where he lay, hands under his head looking up at the ceiling.

"Don't you like me?"

"No. Why are you still here?"

She sighed a little and supposed this meant her first attempt to make a friend must have failed. She wondered what she had done wrong, but did not want to ask.

"I'll go then."

The boy watched her without her seeing it, saw her shoulders sink a little, heard the hurt creep into her voice that was not an act, found, in spite of himself and everything else that he cared just a little.

"Wait," he swung round to sit on the edge of the bed. She turned back so quickly it was pitiful. He shook his head.

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Euphemia," she said, hopeful again in an instant – "Euphemia Coriole Orestes."

"That's – that's disgusting."

"It's Effie for short."

"That's a little better. Listen Effie, don't listen to any of it, alright? Everything they tell you in the Capitol's a lie. Don't fall for it – and don't trust any of them, okay?"

"I don't understand. Can I trust _you?" _

"I'll be dead this time next week. Does it matter?"

"Don't say that!"

He shrugged again;

"Well. Don't trouble your pretty little head about it."

"You –" she simpered a little, though it was a genuine enough question – "You think I'm pretty?" she tossed her hair a little, brushed out her skirt unnecessarily. He rolled his eyes.

"Spare me. I have a girlfriend."

She could never have quite explained her disappointment.

"I –" she started, awkwardly – "I wish you weren't –" it occurred to her suddenly that she could not really say "Going to die" – "In the Hunger Games" she finished, lamely.

"Yeah. You and me both, princess."

She remembered the phrase she had been looking for; it suddenly seemed like the perfect thing to say –

"May the – odds be ever in your favour!" she chirped, though it came out a little like a question.

"Christ," he groaned, shaking his head – "I mean it now – fuck off."

She flashed a final dazzling smile and a butterfly wave as she sashayed out the door.

_x_

**This my first attempt at Hayffie, do let me know how it's going! It will absolutely get explicit in later chapter, just so you're warned/ prepared! :-)**


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

His name, she discovered, was Haymitch Abernathy, and she spent all of her time between that first meeting and the televised interview wondering how to pronounce it. No amount of pestering would make her mother let her be there for any of the mentoring process, and she was made heavily to feel privileged for having been taken outside the Capitol at all.

By the time the games started to appear on the air, she had defined her rather bizarre feelings -at least enough to know that she had something of a crush. She watched for him in the Tribute's parade, though the baggy miner's outfits were distinctly and upsettingly unflattering. She wondered who the girl next to him was and tried to ignore the silly spike of jealousy. She gasped at the interview when he said the games were stupid and wondered how he dared denote them in such a manner.

When the first episode aired, she was relieved that she had always been such a fan of the show anyway; her obsessive watching this year went almost entirely unnoticed. Nobody saw her chew her lip until it bled all the way through the early stages. She was as blinded as half of the tributes were by the beauty of the arena, but still she noticed that he was not. She saw him make for the Cornucopia whilst half of them blinked and stared and in that way died. Her heart raced when she saw him take out the two careers so viciously she was alarmed to feel how wildly she shivered inside, concerned as to the exact cause and meaning of her own reactions.

She almost felt jealous of his alliance with Maysilee, but still cried when the girl died and he held her hand the whole time. She wondered, as she watched, whether that comment _I have a girlfriend _had meant he _did _think she was pretty or not.

Halfway through the show, her mother granted her the annual choice – a tradition in their family – of who to sponsor. She raised an eyebrow at Effie's choice but had become used to her strange requests by now and honoured it all the same. After long thought, genuine sleepless nights and dreams of being in the games with him herself – dreams that were worryingly more enjoyable than she supposed they ought to be – she decided to send food and water supplies, having noticed that almost everything in the arena was poisoned. She witnessed his relief upon receipt with a wild dancing in her heart.

When she saw him take the axe blow, she almost had hysterics, and cried again to see him still alive. Then the footage began to confuse; it was strangely put together and events were hard to follow. The next thing she knew Haymitch Abernathy from District Twelve- if you'd believe it-was being declared Victor of the 50th Annual Hunger Games and Effie was shrieking and dancing around the living room like a mad thing.

When her mother left for the victory tour not long after she refused to take Effie with her despite – perhaps because – of all pleading – and Effie wondered if she had maybe been just a little too obvious.

-x-

In fact, it was three years before she got the chance to leave the Capitol again, in which time she set gingerly out upon a modelling career and convinced herself, almost but not quite successfully that she had forgotten her silly thirteen year old crush on the boy from District Twelve. The boys she met in those years were well mannered, pleasant, courteous and in all respects utterly unsatisfying. So she got a reputation for being particular, fussy and precious which she did her best to live up to, all the while thinking _if only they knew_ when she would not even let herself really know it.

She skimmed through the days, putting on outfits and faces, accepting now on an outer level at least that there really was nothing more than this.

But at night she twisted and burned for remembering; fire behind the eyes and discourtesy, a half smile and sarcasm and all those dreams of an alliance in the games; of flying sometimes, away from them, hand in hand, sometimes dying together. Sometimes she was Maysilee Donner and he held her hand as she died. She would wake up skin tingling from a touch she had never felt, cold in its absence.

And then one dull day on a photo shoot she got caught up in conversation with an ex model she knew, recently turned Escort.

"You should try it Effie –" she was saying, a career step up and blah blah blah blah and _maybe _Effie said and smile, smile, smile.

"I'm setting out for Twelve tomorrow," Livilla said and Effie stood up faster than her eight inch peacock diamante heels would really allow, wobbling a little as she did –

"Twelve? District Twelve?"

"Yes, alright, I know it's not –"

"Take me with you."

"You mean you _are _interested?"

"Of _course –" _rapid plans began to fire in Effie's head – "You could take me as a – a protégé – and then – when you move on to better things maybe – I could take twelve."

-x-

And just like that she found herself on a train headed back towards District Twelve , repeating over and over in her head that it was a career move, nothing more.

She had sent six hours that morning packing, re- packing, checking and re-checking her face and hair.

"Of course it's just a starting point –" Livilla was chattering away, on and on about how much better one could do than Twelve, how rough the district as – "They only have one mentor you know, that victor from the quarter quell – and he's perfectly _ghastly –"_

"Really?" Effie feigned polite disinterest, though it was the first she had heard of him in years and her heart was doing somersaults.

"Oh yes. They say he's not stopped drinking since the games these three years solid, well you know how these district people are –"

Effie tuned out, looking away out the window. She wondered how she could not have imagined before that he would have changed in this time. It occurred to her to wonder for the first time if he would even remember her.

-x-

They met in the dining car the evening after the reaping, an official initial meeting for the sake of formality. She wondered if they would see she was shaking like a leaf. She tried not to. She stood up when they came in, Livilla leading Haymitch who slouched along behind her, looking like he would rather be anywhere but there. She could not help but be a little scared at first, of the anger in those eyes and how different he was from the boy she had met, and it was a boy no longer that she saw, tall and broad for all he was dishevelled and his look was dark and distant. Still, his lips broke into a lazy smirk when he saw her and his eyes travelled over her with a slow insolence that made it hard for her to stay standing.

"Euphemia Coriole Orestes," he enunciated, drawling it, more than a hint of mockery in his voice.

"You remember." She pattered her hair and looked down conspicuously, simpered almost. Livilla looked at them suspiciously;

"You two have met."

"Oh, you don't forget a name like that," Haymitch grinned, coming to her rescue albeit insultingly – "Trust me, I tried."

"Effie's training with me as escort to District Twelve," Livilla went on, motioning them in an awkward dance to take seats – "She'll have my position here when I'm promoted."

He ignored her, cocking his head sharply towards Effie, and she quailed beneath the scorn and something almost like hatred in that glare.

"Well congratulations," he slurred, pouring a glass uninvited. Effie closed her eyes for a second; the clinking sound of decanter and glass.

"So –" he went on. "Going up in the world. Tell me how much do they pay you to pass death sentence on us poor peasants –" he would have gone on but Effie began –

"I don't think –" simultaneous to Livilla's –

"Well really!"

Haymitch simply grinned and raised his glass to her.

"Cheers."

-x-

Later that night, Haymitch told Effie what Peeta had told him.

"Oh that poor thing," she gushed. "It must be –"

"Oh Jesus, fucking don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't do that "it must be awful for him" crap. Like you have any idea."

"Oh and you do, I suppose?"

"What it's like to love a girl you could never hope to be good enough for? Yeah, I think I have a small fucking idea."

"_You? _Love a girl?" She sneered and arched an eyebrow – "I shudder to imagine."

He stared at her, hating her, knowing she had to know and was taunting him for never saying it, not in twenty years of whatever it was that they had. He threw his glass to the floor, smirking when she jumped a little; stalking her in the way he knew made her like to think he could hurt her. He couldn't tell her. Not say the words, not make it real. Couldn't tell her how she had looked to him then, shimmering like a beam of sunlight in a place light never seemed to reach. Couldn't tell her he had seen the way she trembled and realised for the first time in three years that his heart had not died completely as he had assumed. Could not tell her how beautiful she had looked, glittering gold and soft and delicate, the way one long curl of her hair had fallen down over her face and he wanted to put it back but wasn't sure if it was meant to look like that. Couldn't tell her how much he had wanted to touch her and how afraid that made him. Couldn't tell her how his hands had shaken when he poured that drink not, this time, for drunkenness but for looking at her too hard.

He couldn't speak a word of it and when his lips trembled from all the words trapped behind them he crashed them into her to still them as he had always done, pushing her into that stupid table, pounding her into it and losing everything, even love, inside her.

This was the way it had always been. This was, he reminded himself violently and for the thousandth time, the way it would always stay.

_x_


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

After that first meeting he would barely talk to her; in fact it seemed to her as though he was actually trying to avoid her entirely. By turns she would try and be an adult about it then stamp her foot to herself, wailing internally. She was trying so hard to be at her loveliest, putting on all the airs and affectations that worked so well on everyone else and finding to her amazement that they just seemed to make it worse.

She struggled to understand it. Finally, lying awake on the third night, she cracked, dressed with determination and care in the gold dress she had worn that first evening when he had at least actually looked at her and she slipped from her room to creep barefoot down the hall.

She paused outside the door, thought about knocking, remembered she had put determined face on, and tried the handle. It opened and she crept in. There was one light on half way in the corner and there he was, asleep in a sprawl across the bed.

She supposed she should have just made her presence known, but could not resist tip-toeing across the room to look at him asleep. Smiling softly to herself, head humming, she reached to push the untidy strands of hair from his face as though she was enchanted.

Within a second the enchantment broke. She was hurled on her back across the floor, a fierce grip on her wrist and a knife at her throat. If she had not let out a gasping scream, she realised, he would probably have slit her throat without a second thought. As it was, he paused at the sound long enough to look down at her, recognise her, the wild sudden madness dissipating from his eyes.

"Oh," he grunted, breathing heavily, his grip on her wrist already softening – "It's you."

He got up and sat on the side of the bed, yawning and leaving her to pick herself up. She stayed kneeling; blinking, wondering quite how to react to this turn of events.

"So, I'd ask what you were here for –" he sounded almost bored – "but I'll guess it's something really stupid or you're the most inept assassin the Capitol could think to send."

"Assassin?" she scowled – "Me? Do I _look _like an assassin?"

He made a _pfft _sound and shrugged.

"I don't know _what _you look like."

Despite the earlier knife-at-throat, she was hurt by this.

"Why would the Capitol want you dead?"

"Why would they want my family dead?"

"What?"

"Didn't tell you that part, did they princess? Everyone –" he sighed angrily – " –I ever cared about – dead before I ever even got back . Just been waiting for them ever since to come for me. Wasn't expecting them to send their prettiest."

"Dead?" She still couldn't grasp it, even to drop it, as she should have. Also it did not go unnoticed that he had called her pretty – "Why?"

"Guess they didn't like me using their terrain to win. Or didn't they show you that bit either?"

She shook her head. He tried not to notice how the gold of her hair shivered against her pale shoulders in the warm light.

"So if you're not here to kill me – and I'm starting to wish you were –" she could not tear her gaze from his fingers, playing casually with the knife in his hands – "Why _are_ you here, sweetheart?"

"I just – I wanted to talk."

"And why would I want to talk to you?"

You're so mean. Why? Why don't you like me anymore?"

He laughed nastily.

"_That's _what this is? I sure underestimated the problems of the privileged. What makes you think I ever liked you, darling?"

She wished he wouldn't say such words she might have wanted to hear if they had actually been true. Her eyes stung and she stood up finally, getting angry to cover the stinging;

"You're rude, uncouth – and horrible – and I don't think I want to talk to you anymore."

She stalked to the door, not wanting to leave, certainly not wanting him to see her cry if she was going to either. The knife slammed into the wood of the door just as she reached for the handle. She whipped around –

"Are you _insane?" _she hissed – "You could have killed me!"

"Darling, if I'd wanted to kill you –" he moved so fast suddenly she could hardly breathe in the time it took him to have one hand on the knife and one slammed beside her head, trapping her with his body between wall and door – "You'd be dead."

He smirked at her like she was prey, and in spite of -or because of- how it scared her, she felt her insides flutter and clench not unpleasantly at all.

"You know, I think I've worked you out now." His hand travelled down the wall, brushing her neck, circling her throat with teasing gentleness.

"Oh –" she swallowed hard, though he still chuckled darkly to feel the pulse crazy at her throat – "Really?" her eyebrow arched and he tightened his grip around her neck.

"Oh come on, you think you're the first Capitol bitch to seek a cheap thrill from a dead man walking?"

"You're not –" she began – "You survived."

"Yeah. Whatever. If you call it that. You're just like the rest of them, only -" _only I want you. _He did not stop himself quite in time for her not to hear the words he did not quite say.

"I watched you," she tried – "In the games."

"Get a thrill out of it, did you?" his lip curled in disgust.

"No – I – you're disgusting! I tried to help – I sponsored you!"

"Ain't that sweet. Tell me something sweetheart – you think having to hold your guts in place is _sexy? _You think nearly dying is a big turn on?"

He wrenched the knife from the door and held it to her throat while his hand unconsciously slid to cup her breast through the rustling fabric of her dress. He watched for a reply and when she did not quite dare to say _yes, actually _out loud he saw it clearly enough in the dark of her eyes and grinned to feel her heart beat thunderously at the press of cold metal against her throat.

"I was wrong," he murmured. He sounded almost impressed. "You _are _different – you're sicker than I thought."

He never meant to kiss her. He swore later not to know how it had happened but the knife clattered across the floor and he was teeth and tongue and angry lips and the taste of her so sweet and delicious like a liquor he had never even imagined.

"You –" she breathed in the first space he gave her, wishing she hadn't just remembered – "You have a girlfriend."

He slapped her as though she had stung him, she arched towards him with a little gasp and he snarled back –

"Shut up. Be good – and I'll put the knife back at your throat when I fuck you."

She whimpered, sighed, her head fell back as he attacked her soft neck with his teeth, hungry for her now he had broken, biting her to mark and she struggled ineffectually and only for show.

"I don't want –" it was a lie and she did not know how to continue it.

"I don't give a damn what you want," he growled into her skin and her insides melted again and when he lifted her she wrapped her legs around his back so he could swing her round to the bed and tumble them both into a heap where her dress tore like tissue in his hands. His throat felt dry looking at her and his hands trembled with wanting to touch her as he hurried through his own clothes. He saw her eyes widen, travelling to the vicious scar that tore across his abdomen and he pushed her down hard for it. He did not want to see her care, did not want to see beyond the lust in her eyes, did not want to care for her himself, not in the slightest. He gathered the knife up from the floor, pinning it to her throat as a caution against such tenderness.

He meant to use her, that was all, hard and harsh if need be for breaking three years of fidelity to a dead girl. If he had to have her again and again for it to be enough she would still be nothing more than a convenience. He pushed a hand between her legs to find her already more than ready. He spat in her face for it and her legs parted at it. His hardness hurt him and he thrust into her roughly. She screamed, for it was more than she had ever known, ever taken, and he could not stop himself from stroking her skin, her hair, even her face to ease it and she in turn wondered if she could die from pleasure, and wondered at how such rough hands could touch so tenderly. He brushed the tears from her cheeks and murmured in her ear without thinking;

"Hush, sweetheart, hush, I've got you, it's alright."

But then she was so soft, so tight, so perfect he could not hold back, he rammed into her as savagely as his whispered words were soft. He could not remember the last time anything had ever felt quite so good, even drink, and soon she retaliated with nails scoring his back and turning his whispers into growls and curses and even once her name and when she heard that –

"Fuck, Effie -"

She came sobbing and biting into his shoulder with sharp little teeth and he pounded her for as long as he could hold before coming just as hard inside her, the tension in his body and the pain in his chest divinely breaking apart for a while as he growled his pleasure into her perfect skin.

"So," she said, in the silence that followed but did not last – "You _do _think I'm pretty."

He rolled his head, sighing deeply, to look at her, his eyes already glazing over to her or any expression of emotion he might have made.

"Anyone ever tell you you're quite insufferable?"

She uttered an "Oh!" of indignation.

"Oh what did you want, sweet nothings? Sorry to disappoint, princess."

"But – you like me."

"No. I don't."

"But – we have something here."

"Forget it sweetheart. Yeah – you're pretty – a pretty enough bauble – a little Capitol trinket I could get used to using. Live with it or get lost."

He wished he did not feel as afraid as he did that she really would just go. He almost wished he did not have to lie to her.

"Fine," she snapped, wrapping the sheet around her and getting up, angry and injured – "I'll go and I'll stay gone!"

"Effie, get the hell back!" he groaned, angrier at himself for asking than at her for anything. It seemed to him, just for a moment, that there was no harm she could ever do on purpose. Beauty was poison; he had learnt that well enough and now this one was seeping into his heart.

"Why?" she glared – "You don't want me, you just –"

"No –" he managed to falter for only a second – "But I want my damned bed sheet and –"

She was furious at herself for yielding so quickly but he took her wrist when she sat back down, fingers circling her palm with wicked conviction.

"And?"

"And you look better without it anyway."

It was not quite the sweet nothing she had looked for, but none of this was quite as her idiotic imaginings had painted and that was fine. And then the kiss that followed was certainly nothing to be building a future on, but it was enough for the rest of that night.

_x_

**So, this is the first straight porns I've written in a very long time. I hope it was okay, do let me know. :-)**


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

If she had thought that anything would change, she was right; only if anything he was ruder to her now than ever. She wondered if it was wrong of her to rather like it, not even just because it was better than being ignored but because no matter how he sneered at her throughout the day, it was now him who came to her every night. And so it continued for the rest of the journey home.

So often she caught him glaring at her as though, as he said one day, he'd like to slap all the make-up from her face. It was only when she was not looking that he would watch her beneath his eyelids, contemplative and almost affectionate, almost as troubled by wanting her as he was intent upon formulating plans for her body.

It occurred to her that for all of their sniping they never actually talked. As it was, every time she closed her eyes he was still slamming her into the mattress. She lost focus and reverted to petty insult. But she _wanted _to say more, she always did. Wanted and dreaded him seeing that she might actually have such things as real feelings. When she finally did speak up it was, of course, to say the wrong thing.

Because she was learning to give back as good- perhaps even better- than she got. When he pronounced _Capitol _as though it were an insult she countered by making _District Twelve _sound like the most disgusting slur she could utter. She would even wrinkle her nose in distaste as though it smelled bad.

One day he went almost the whole day using her full name every time they spoke until she wailed she was going to get a stage name. It didn't help; he just spent the rest of the day making up stupid and insulting ones for her. Sometimes she forgot to display her outraged effrontery quickly enough and would giggle and he would snort in what she assumed passed for a laugh and remember for a moment that they were almost children yet. It warmed her heart to see him smile.

"You're nicer when you smile," she said one afternoon. It was a mistake. The smile dropped from his face as though it had never been there, certainly he looked as though he would like to think it had not; it was replaced in an instant by a guilty and sullen glare.

"Look sweetheart, life may be all sweetness and light where you come from but out here in the real world there ain't much to smile about."

She flared up fast back then, speaking before she thought in spite of all her training and inexplicably angered by that guilt.

"So you say," she snapped, in that tone of excessive sweetness that made him want to punch her even before her shot was fully fired – "I think you just don't want to stop beating yourself up over your dead girlfriend."

She shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have harboured the strange jealousy that she did, and he in turn would not have been so incensed with her if he had not been beating himself up and almost entirely on her account. He heard her words almost before she did and his face quickly masked over with fury as he jumped up, throwing the bottle in his hand to skim by her head and crash into the wall. That crash of glass sounded so redolent of late nights at home in her childhood apartment, and made her angry and bored more than scared.

"If you were a man I'd break your neck for that."

She darted back when he came towards her, almost welcoming the fight –

"If _you _were a man I'd be scared," she fired back, breathless at her quickness and stupidity. She wished sometimes she did not have to speak the first thing that came into her head but in fact it seemed to arrest him and the hand that had gone for her throat lingered at her shoulder, running a sliver of her tumbled hair through his fingers.

"I could really get to hate you, you know that?"

"Feeling's – mutual," she hissed between breaths as he shoved her into the door. It was true and yet the most incredible lie at the same time.

"You personally," he reiterated – "Not _just _everything you stand for."

Still he kissed her like he hated her and snarled with a hand up her skirt that she wore too many clothes.

"Fuck you," she whispered back, appalled and delighted to hear herself say it and he almost smiled to hear the words come out of those prim and pretty lips.

"No sweetheart," he grunted, hard and aching for her unbearably – and how little would he admit how easily she got him to this point – "Other way round." in a few rough moves he was shoving into her with barbaric need and she scratched those false nails across his back until they snapped. He called her a bitch, a whore, a worthless Capitol cunt as he pounded her into the door and she shivered around him to hear it, her body laughing in delight at this litany of what seemed to her as some kind of affirmation.

In the space after, where they failed to meet each other's eyes, she walked extremely carefully, with practised steadiness back to her private suite in the certain knowledge that he would follow.

Alone she could hear her own voice ringing in her ears, lowered with vulgarisms that it would have shocked her to hear from another, her ears still thrilled to his insults like kisses ringing around her head. She looked in the mirror and asked herself sternly _Euphemia Orestes, who are you? _and she watched her face smile as she recognised herself for the first time in years.

When he came in as predicted a few minutes later he watched her for a moment before shaking his head

"Bitch, you know you're beautiful."

But she _didn't _know, could not know; brought up not to believe such ridiculousness she shook her head, tears jumping in her eyes.

"You think I'm beautiful?"

"You do ask the important questions, don't you princess?" he mocked but relented a moment later enough to add – "I don't trust beautiful things". She took that as a yes. He locked the door behind him.

-x-

The last night before they were due to part ways she lay beside him, gently tracing his scars with her fingertips in idle fascination, delighted that he was not stopping her.

"Will you miss me?" she whispered, slipping it in because she felt that just now she could.

"I'm sorry, are you still here?"

"Well good, I won't miss you either."

"I don't care if I never see you again."

"So we're even?"

"Just this once."

He kissed the top of her head and held her just a little bit closer.

-x-

He had loved her so much then, he could admit it now, at least to himself; now that he had a whole new set of lies to set store by. He ran them through his head as he stared down at the scar in the wood.

That this had died a long time ago. That what he felt now was nostalgia, nothing more. That they were different now. That he could no longer see any of the beauty he had seen then underneath all that idiocy. That there was clearly nothing left in her that indicated she still felt anything real at all. He thought about the kids, how ridiculous it was that they were pretending so hard to _be _in love when here he was, and Effie, pretending just as hard not to be.

He took a long drink to drown _that _thought. Drank to remember the litany of lies. Put down the bottle heavily and headed to her room, not to miss a moment of the time they had left to them for this year at least.

_x_


	5. Chapter 5

**Trigger warnings for this chapter for consensual non-consent/ dub-con including potentially triggering language. **

**5.**

It was no secret that Effie was furious when she did not get recommended the next year for position of Escort to District Twelve. She was "too young," Livilla said, though there was rarely such thing in the Capitol. Too _inexperienced, _she added. But Effie had seen the way Livilla watched her when they made their goodbyes to the tributes and mentor and she wondered if she had seen and disliked just a little of what Effie was trying so hard to hide.

People knew she was cross, angry, disappointed; she made no secret of it and when her superiors perceived this as ambition it turned out, accidentally, to be a mark in her favour; a good career move even. Her mother, if she had still lived with her, could not have instructed her better – _show just a little – _she would have said – _enough to reel them in – _and then that common Capitol adage – _never let them see you bleed._

But she _was _bleeding, and she felt it hard for all she tried to close her eyes to it. She let them see the disappointment and, at any rate, a gentle, ladylike rage only because by no means would she let any of them see her to be heartbroken.

It was a pain that kept her screaming silently by night, biting furiously on her pillow in a roar that she knew she could never let out loud.

By day she discovered corsetry as a means of holding her insides in when it seemed like they would fall out. The painful comparative irony of this was not lost on her either. She would whisper _tighter_ every time, even when it felt like her ribs would break. Costume, she discovered, could double both as bandage and weaponry, her armour against a world that struck her more and more as the lie a teenage boy had whispered to her that it was.

She watched the people around her transform themselves into fantastical creatures whilst simultaneously regarding the District people as animals. She saw them whinny and prance and lie, deriding the rest of the world for barbarism while thinking themselves exempt. More and more she noticed the alcoholism that ran rife beneath the sophistication of Capitol cocktails, and the cruel bitter laughter that tickled behind the dazzling wines. But you didn't fall down drunk, didn't say anything you meant, didn't let any of it show.

More and more, alcoholism struck her as a genuine answer, the easiest way to give up- and then one night after this thinking she smashed a cabinet full of crystal in a quiet room almost alone, hurled a bottle of century old brandy at the wall, screeched –

"This shit destroyed everything –" and burst into tears on the frightened Avox girl who came in to clear up – "Everything I ever loved," she whispered. It was the first and last time she would say it.

After that she promised herself never again; she would help nobody and nothing by becoming that person too and she devoted herself to the application of so much eye make-up as to make crying a nightmare.

She did cry, just one more time, when she had her hair shaved off to make the wigs easier to switch round. She remembered fingers that were gentler than they should have been stroking her hair with a fondness, almost reverence that would never go spoken, remembered a sleepy one time whisper that her hair felt nice that would be forgotten in the morning. Seeing her hair on the floor was like staring at severed limb, she was sure; she determined to bin the memories along with it and kept a few strands in a locket at the last minute.

It was five years before the opportunity to Escort came round again. Five years of training, etiquette, elocution, propriety, finishing school – by which time she had all but forgotten why she had sought this career in the first place. These days, when she looked in the mirror she was relieved not to know herself. By the time her review came round, she liked to think that there was no longer enough of herself left to remember being that girl who had hurt so much. She felt guilty, cowardly, ashamed – but it was better than some of the alternatives, and so she took it. As she waited to hear where she would be formally assigned as escort-in-training, this time officially, she found herself thinking wildly _not twelve, not twelve, not twelve. _She wondered if this was how Reaping felt.

He pronounced the words so casually –

"Let's see now, there's an opening coming up in District Twelve…" and the bottom fell out of the house of cards that had become her world. She could not, did not turn it down; but she left wondering if she would ever be able to hold this front up for long enough to get through.

-x-

It started to crack within moments of their arrival. In her official capacity, she now had to accompany the current escort to the town square. Her relief at being told to wait backstage shattered to pieces upon hearing a sardonic voice behind her groan-

"Am I seeing double today, or did they actually send two of you?"

She whipped around smartly on one heel;

"Either option's valid I'm sure," she smiled, too sweetly. _The heart is dead, _she whispered to herself furiously, pushing the beat of it down hard, _it's dead._

_(You heard me scream, I made you scream, you've been deeper inside me, body and soul than anybody else could ever get)_

Haymitch blinked, did a double take and squinted at her –

"Effie? Jesus – that you under there or did my nightmares just get really weird?"

"Effie Trinket." She held out a gloved hand, dripping feathers and chilliness – "And we've never met." She almost hissed it.

He didn't take her hand, made a _huh _sound and swerved off to one side.

"That's your play? Christ, I'd rather be in those games again than go along with one of yours."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

He snorted.

"I don't know what that peacock on your head means, but I guess I'm gonna have to put up with it."

"I imagine we _will _have to work together for the next two weeks," she managed stiffly.

"Oh," he rolled his eyes. "Lucky me. Won't this be interesting."

"You're drunk," she snapped, muttering a thoughtless, "As usual," that he was not supposed to hear but he smirked when he did.

"And you're still a superficial bitch princess."

"We've. Never. Met!" she hissed, spitting it out savagely while her mascara threatened to run.

"Whatever, sweetheart," he laughed, the way she suspected (remembered) he laughed when something hurt – "Fucking whatever".

_(I loved you, you were not indifferent to me and these hearts are crushed and drowned to pieces now, drowned in all that liquor, squeezed in ribbon and lace.)_

-x-

"So," he said later that night over dinner, when the tributes had departed, red eyed to bed – "_Trinket –_ who came up with that piece of marketing?"

"It was a conscious decision – of my own," she clipped back – "Stage names work wonders if one is to become used to making public appearances."

"Is that right? You're sure no-one thought that up for you? Put the idea in your head perhaps?" he grinned at her viciously and her lips thinned in response;

"There was nobody in mind, no." It was an easy lie, one she had practised to herself often ever since she had decided on the name.

-x-

"I'm sorry Effie, I should have warned you," Lavinia whispered to her, with Haymitch out of the room for a moment.

"Warned me what?"

"He's the only mentor the district has you see. Believe me if there was anyone else…."

"Oh, I see."

"To be honest –" she whispered – "It's half the reason everyone hurries to move on to better things –" she suddenly remembered that Effie was just starting out in District Twelve and backpedalled hard – "But I mean, it's a starting point isn't it?" she smiled brightly.

"I'll be fine," Effie lied.

"I know you will. Just ignore him if he's rude to you."

"Yeah Effie," Haymitch leered, slouching back in just in time to catch this – "Ignore me if I'm rude. Couldn't have that now could we?"

-x-

She _did _ignore him, or at any rate gave all the appearance of ignoring him steadfastly for the next two days. She locked her door at night. He'd speak to her, she'd brush it off with a tight pleasantry; he'd look at her, she'd look away. Her heart hurt more than a dead thing should and she feared he could hear it beat. She comforted herself with the knowledge her heart could not quite hold onto hard enough – that since he had never cared for her it was only herself she was hurting.

The second night it almost fell apart. Despite all her efforts, he caught her in the corridor alone; he had been slouching against the wall watching her walk down, intently enough to make the blood rush in her ears. When she tried to get past him and found it too awkward she was forced to speak;

"What are you staring at?"

"You. I'm wondering how long you can keep this up."

"Keep _what _up?"

He grabbed her wrist, sudden and fierce; her little hand was almost swamped in his and he pushed her back against the wall by the window.

"I _know _you, _Trinket," _he hissed, so close in her ear that she shuddered, thrilling at his breath, foul though it was on her neck. She was going to melt, she knew it as much as he did, wanted it and didn't want it in equal measures. Too much at war with herself to let either side win, she turned her face away even though her lips had parted and her breath quickened;

"Let me go," she whispered, but it was tiny and uncertain.

"This time, sweetheart". He was so close, she could feel how much he wanted her; he let go of her wrist curtly, but pushed against her just before he pushed away and trailed rough fingers up her arm that made her want to scream. She hurried away then, cheeks burning.

-x-

The next night he cornered her in the corridor outside her room, slamming his hand on the door to close it just as she was about to slip inside. He was more than usually drunk and she had seen this coming all day, delicious anticipation far outweighing the dread she had tried to convince herself she felt.

"Not tonight sweetheart," he hissed, pushing her against the door, squeezing her tits coarsely through her shirt like the lecherous oaf she always accused him of being; "I'm done playing this game now and so are you."

"You're drunk," she spat, not, he could not help but notice, _Get off_.

"The hell's that got to do with anything?"

"Stop," she said, squirming, not wanting him to see how little she meant it – "I'll scream."

"Go ahead," he sneered, squeezing. "Reckon I could get my dick in you before anyone came running. Always did like you better screaming."

"You're disgusting," she groaned – "And you're vulgar, and I hate you."

"Words sweetheart, you think I give a fuck?"

"I could –" she could see all her good intentions falling around her like ash and she was trying so very hard to care, impossible though it was the way her skin was remembering how to sing again.

"You won't though –" he grinned, biting at her neck – "I'll fuck you over and over, fill your cunt and ass with spunk, come all over your tits and that pretty face when you suck me off like a good little whore, you remember how many times I can use you over the course of a night –"

"No – I don't –"

"You'll take it sweetheart. I'll rape you if I have to, and soak you in my spunk, don't tell me you don't want it bitch- I know where you get off. I remember all the times you begged me to pound you harder, begged me to hurt you that little bit more, shove this big hard cock in you like the beast I am –"

"You're a monster –"

"Yeah, well done. Now are you going to open that door for me or do I have to kick it down?"

He never does work out how she performed that move in heels, opening the door with her back to it and walking in at the same time. He slammed it behind him and slammed her into it.

"That's better." He buried his face in her neck, hands everywhere, and half of her clothes were off before she even managed her -

"Let me go!"

"No. But you keep struggling sweetheart, you know it makes me harder."

"You're a brute – a low down disgusting animal –"

"Gets you hot, doesn't it? This animal all over you – Jesus Effie –"

His travelling fingers found her so wet he pushed them straight into her and she was almost but not quite dismayed to hear the –

"Fuck – Haymitch," that whispered past her lips. He grinned;

"Yeah, say my name princess, beg me- let me hear you say it –"

There was nothing that thrilled him more than hearing the obscenities she could utter in those righteous Capitol tones, all those words she had been holding back for so long, painting herself into a picture of a girl who would never say such things; but they spilled from her instantly now without having to be asked twice.

"Haymitch- please, fuck me, shove it in me, please, please, please, fuck me so hard –"

Her cheeks flushed at her own words and he unbuckled his belt quickly, afraid he might fall apart before he could even get it in her. He held her around the waist, hands almost circling her, fingers working apart the laces of her corset so that she could breathe – it felt like the first time in years - raising her up the wall and bringing her down on his cock with a deep growl that turned into almost a roar at the pleasure of feeling her around him. He moved her, pounding her into the wall, felt the knock of her heels against his back as her ankles crossed behind him, realised that those stupid heels and the corset were all she was wearing and hissed in a delirium of delight as he thrust into her.

It was him who had come to her this time, but it was Effie who really screamed. It was a relief to scream, and by now, if she had already fallen so hard she was _damn _well going to scream until her lungs gave out. After these long days trying to trip her up, it was him who now shoved a hand over her mouth so they did not hear her down the hall. When he released his hand he could not help but look up at her with something almost like adoration as she whispered _oh god, oh god, oh god _as though it were a prayer and when she saw him look at her like that it broke her into pieces just as she had been waiting to break for so long. She came screaming again and destroying the collar of his shirt in her balled fists, and feeling her body dance and tremble around him he came just behind her, releasing more than just the lust he had known about inside her.

Within seconds she had slipped down the wall, the effort of holding that position breaking with her knees failure to work. He let her slide into his arms, carrying her the short way to the bed where she reached for him, grabby and wanting and with a smile as sweet as he had first seen on her eight years ago. He did not want to fall further, but he had already toppled and could not do other than join her.

"Effie?" He held her in a close, rough crush.

"Mmm?"

"I don't like your hair."

"It's not _real! _Look –" the glance she gave him as she took it off was so shy it made him wish he had not commented, but then the crystal light of not-quite tears danced in her eyes again and she whispered –

"Don't look at me like that".

He blinked at her, stroking the hair that was so short now it was like petting a cat;

"What did they do to you, princess?"

"It was me," she replied defensively, though she could not keep the hint of sadness out of her voice – "I did it myself."

"Sweetheart –" he began in a drawn-out sigh that went nowhere, and after a long moments silence in which he stroked her head so sweetly she began to stop feeling so hideous, he added –

"Effie, don't make me wait for you so long again."

She smiled;

"I thought you said you wouldn't miss me?"

"I didn't say I missed you. Just – I can't wait that long – any more than I could wait that long for a drink."

"You miss me like you'd miss alcohol?" she sighed – "Wonderful!"

It was good to learn sarcasm again, but better still, when she thought about it a little harder, it really was the sweetest thing he had ever said to her.

_x_

**I hope I trigger warned this adequately; to me this ****_isn't _****dub con because there's no question that Effie was into it, however if someone says no I don't want to be presenting this as any kind of blurred line, hence warnings. Ultimately I figure if it's dubious if it's dub-con then it's probably dub con. Like I say, I view this as consensual but I understand alternative opinions. Also it's hard to trigger warn for certain words without saying the word, i.e. if anyone can give me a better way of wording the warning please and thank you. :-)**

**I like my sex scenes slightly nasty sometimes, I also don't want to actively distress anyone. Tis a puzzle :-)**


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

"We are not star crossed lovers!" Katniss had screeched, and for a moment seeing him shout at her, Effie had seen Haymitch come closer to really identifying with a phrase than she had noticed in a very long time. He almost seemed to flinch at it. For the first time in a long time she found herself pushing her selfish thoughts down and leading him away from the angry teenagers before he could make anything worse.

She led him back to her room – his always contained concealed weapons, and she could feel anger in the tension in his arm as she led him firmly, almost pinching, through the door.

"Damn it Effie, put me down, I am not a dog!" He shook her off as soon as they were in private.

"Well, maybe if you didn't behave like one. Really, you're no better than she is, honestly – manners, all of you just need –"

"Fuck manners!" he yelled "Fuck 'em to hell!" He stormed across the room, wrenching the door of the liquor cabinet open so hard a bottle shot out and smashed on the floor.

"Now that is just a _waste!" _she shrilled in the way he especially hated, glaring up at her as he poured a glass with fingers that steadied quickly as he drained it. She didn't flinch; she had never known a drunk or even a sober person less likely to actually hurt her. By the time he had stood up almost straight, with the second glass in his hand he was physically calmer, if still raging out loud.

"Star crossed lovers!" he scoffed, ranting – "Star crossed fucking lovers! As if it's so hard to pretend to be in love as opposed to –"

"As opposed to what?"

"As opposed to pretending not to be," he finished in a quiet groan, glaring at her and turning away shiftily.

"Haymitch?" she frowned, taking a tentative step towards him – "Is this – about us?"

"No Effie –" he sighed, wearily, shoulders sinking as though unbearably weighed down by it all. "Dearest, sweetest, pestilent nuisance of my life, it _not _about _us. _It will _never _be about us – in fact – there _is _no _us. _There never could –"

He sank down heavily on a sofa that creaked angrily in response, head falling into his hands as though it weighed too much to hold – "Ah, forget it."

Effie frowned daintily, took off her gloves, shoes, jacket, hat, and slowly as an important afterthought, her hair and sat down next to him. She could hear, as it were, a rumbling sound as the structure of lies they had built so solidly over twenty years- that had become a temple to protect themselves in – shifted in its foundations.

"Haymitch –" she whispered. He half looked at her, saw how small and suddenly young she looked, hands in her lap, face downcast. He looked again more closely; "What the _hell –" _she enunciated it so sweetly he smiled just a little – "Is going on here?"

"Remember that thing I told you? That little detail where my family got killed? Because our good president hasn't forgotten it. Once the Capitol makes an example of you, you stay that example forever. If there was anyone left for them to hold over me, do you think they wouldn't? They'd use them and then kill them; you think I want that for y- anyone?"

She shook her head, eyes wide, tears glinting in her feathered eyelashes like jewels.

"I'm sorry," she whispered – "I am so sorry."

At some point she had clutched his hands and he had not let go and they clenched together hard now to the colour of bone.

"Don't be sorry sweetheart, just understand me. All those little things you don't say and I sure as hell don't say? We're gonna carry right on not saying them, okay?"

"Okay," she nodded.

"Good girl." He kissed her then, for the first time in a long time like he loved her, though they both knew it could not be true.

This pact would not last, she knew it. She could still hear that structure creak and sigh. He heard it too and tried to ignore it, determined to keep her safe for a little longer yet.

_Star crossed lovers _she thought later, just before she fell asleep. Out of the sea of memory she remembered why the phrase had jarred with him so.

-x-

It was almost year before she saw him again and almost a year after that. The year after that she started as official escort to District Twelve and the knowledge of having this for a certainty, at least for a few years, felt like a clumsy pat of reassurance.

They fell into a strange and ragged routine; it was simply to wait out the time in between and then, when they had excuse to be together, simply to fuck at every given opportunity. To sweat and scream and hate with wild and angry passion. She craved it like oxygen; he needed it like drink.

"I hate you," he snarled, buried to the hilt inside her, pounding her into the floor – "Disgusting Capitol bitch, I fucking hate you –"

"I detest you," she hissed back, getting out between gasps – "You're coarse and vile and I'll scream for you to stop –"

"Scream away princess, you know what it does to me, fight me if you want, I'll fucking break you."

"I hate you –" she repeated, like a mantra – "You're a filthy pig and I hate you, unhand me this instant –"

"Because you're making _so _much effort to get away –"

"Any – minute now –"

Her push at him was a feeble thing and he laughed to slam her back down so easily. She only did again for the delight of being forced down.

"_You're _the disgusting one –" he spat in her face and her cunt clenched shamefully in response – "Liking this –"

"I do _not –"_

"You like it when I force you, when I rape you, and I'll do it sweetheart, whenever I want. Use you whenever I want, you stuck up little bitch, I wish I'd never met you –"

"Brute. I wish I'd never met _you."_

"Like hell. This is what you were made for, just to be mine, my little fuck toy, my hole, my whore –"

"I –" she hissed – "Will _never _be yours!"

"You're mine you bitch, for what it's worth –"

"It's worth nothing –" she hissed back, his breath was hot on her neck and she was so close now – "You are _nothing _to me."

"Or you to me, you worthless cunt –"

"Fuck – Haymitch –" she growled.

"Yeah sweetheart you come for me, nobody makes you come like I do, do they? Say my name princess, say it –"

She would say it, scream it over and over as her name tumbled from him in a rush, an outpouring that belied every other word they fired at each other.

"I –" she breathed, afterwards, when she lay with her head against his chest, his heartbeat in her ears, his fingers lightly stroking the back of her neck – "I – will hate you – forever." She sighed it happily.

"Feeling's mutual sweetheart," he murmured back, looking away from her as he wondered if there was more of a promise made in this than he had wanted there to be.

-x-

"This part," she said, the last time they had together that year, biting her lip and looking down as she put her clothes back on with slow regret – "It's getting harder."

"Which part?" he grunted.

"_You _know," she sighed, not wanting to say _saying goodbye, _she looked up at him sharply – "How will this ever end?"

"Does it have to?"

"No but –"

"Then quit it. Don't start any star crossed lovers shit with me sweetheart."

"We are _not _star crossed lovers!" She hissed back, furiously, cheeks flushing even under the white, "Help me lace this."

"You're damn right we're not," he nodded, getting up groaningly to lace her corset from the back.

"As if I could ever –"

"Shut up Effie –" he snarled, pulling her laces harder than he meant to in anger. She exhaled fiercely and held onto the back of a chair – "Shut the fuck up."

"Tighter," she hissed through clenched teeth, because her corset already hurt her and it was helping. Typically it occurred to him only now for the first time, hearing the tense distress in her voice, that she hurt herself through this on purpose and it made him stop, relent so fast he hated himself for the weakness. But he paused, touched her arm gently –

"Effie –" he tried.

"Tighter," she snapped again, because something had to hold her together. He pulled, her head rushed, her knuckles gripped the chair back and she nodded in approval.

"Star crossed lovers my ass," he muttered under his breath, and continued.

_x_


	7. Chapter 7

**7.**

Two weeks to perhaps a month every year was not enough. It could never have been enough. A lifetime, Effie thought, would not have been enough – though on the whole she was learning hard to smack down any such notion that felt like 'romantic.'

She became obsessed with maximising time, using the seconds that they had to her idea of maximum capacity. Once or twice she wondered if she was not helping to kill their tributes with this preoccupation, but each time she put the idea quickly and neatly away.

The tick-tock of time became a metronome beat in her head that held her obsessed. An average 334 days a year spent willing her life to pass, and then a maximum maybe thirty in which she wished they would slow down. No two seconds were the same length, she noticed, becoming wrapped up in technicalities, a fascination with time pieces that sent her, briefly back to school in the Capitol to tinker with a course in architectural design.

She pretended to be less interested than she was, pretended to be slower, less intelligent. It was not good, or rather – she noticed it more and more – not _safe_ to be too clever. One day someone commented on her current fascination with disintegration and ruins, and while they had not meant any kind of metaphor her insides had laughed harshly at the truth of it.

Still she never let anything out, not in all those 334 day stretches, 8016 hours, 480960 minutes. She had the numbers memorised in her head like jail sentences. One year he noticed the tattoo on her hip, an intricate golden number 2592000. He had scowled, tracing it with a finger –

"The hell's that? A prison number? Effie Trinket – rebel? I'd sure as hell like to see that."

"It's nothing," she fluted. "It's – a fashion trend". Not _it's the maximum number of seconds we could potentially get together in a year. _Never that.

One year she did crack. It was the year she turned 28 for the third time. Capitol women had developed a knack for staying 28 for an incredible length of time and 29 for even longer. _Nobody _who was anybody was over thirty any more.

That year the games had been over with surprising, and to Effie, quite terrible rapidity. She hated having to rely on the continuation of such a thing for their time together, but it did not stop her, and these games had ended abruptly after just three days; a scheduled earthquake in the desert arena taking out twice the number of contestants the game makers had counted on.

She _knew _she should have had greater concerns but still she felt cheated. Foolishly she had expressed this and when they parted ways that year it was on the back of a hideous screaming row.

It plagued her for two months too badly to ignore and eventually she could not keep from the desperate and one time measure of heading out alone to District Twelve.

It was not normal for a Capitol citizen to travel to an outer district and so she had to formulate her excuses carefully. Luckily, formulating excuses was her absolute shining talent. Luckier still, it _was _normal for an escort to be able to communicate with the mentor by phone and in a fantastic stroke of good fortune Haymitch had destroyed his not long after that years games.

-x-

Needless to say, he had been talking to her at the time. After weeks and weeks of trying she had been exhilarated when he actually picked up the phone at all, and then instantly dismayed when he sounded barely intelligible on the other end.

"Oh god, it's you," he had slurred on hearing her voice "Don't need you to shine your radiance on us from afar, sweetheart".

"Look, I did _not _call just for you to be rude at me."

"Ugh? So why did you at all princess? You wanna bitch and moan some more about how these poor kids should take longer dying just for your amusement?"

"It is _not _just amusement, you –"

"Save it. Fucking spare me."

"To hear you talk I'd think you didn't care if you saw me or not," she sniffed. She hadn't wanted to do this again, she really hadn't.

"Well fuck me, she finally catches on."

Hurt made her mean. Everything made him mean, and it finally escalated into –

"_Haymitch Abernathy don't you DARE talk to me like that!"_

This was followed by roared cursing and then crashing sounds on the other end before the line went dead.

-x-

She supposed she _could_ have arranged for someone to go out to the district to fix the phone, but her mantra of _if you want something done, do it yourself _had stood her in good stead long enough for it to sound perfectly reasonable when she applied for her travel pass; and in the early spring she set out alone.

-x-

She supposed she was not _exactly _undercover, still she felt a need to not be recognised that prompted her to go in with what she described as "almost no make-up", the plainest skirt she could find – from years ago when the fashion was _District Couture- _and a scarf draped around her head. She knew where the house was from a previous year when they had had to come and actively drag him out of bed for the reaping, and headed that way now like a fugitive.

For once she actually knocked, though she may as well not have; nobody answered. So she went in. And if there was one thing everyone in the district knew but she didn't, it was that you did not go into Haymitch's house uninvited. And nobody was ever invited.

But even if she had known, Effie was not one to be put off easily. Still, though she was not scared she was appalled by the smell that hit her on entering. It was as though nobody had cleaned or washed in this place in years. There were wild animals, she would comment later, that had tidier and sweeter smelling lairs.

She had just started picking her way through the hallway when a growl resounded from within –

"Whoever you are you can fuck off!"

Obviously she did not. Two minutes later she was pinned against the wall with a knife at her throat. Haymitch looked from her to the knife and back again, and groaned.

"Ah fuck, now I'll never get rid of you." He dropped the knife and let her go – "The fuck are _you _doing here?"

"You could at least _try _to seem pleased to see me," she huffed.

"I'm not. How. What – _why _are you here? And why are you dressed like some made – up parody of a peasant?"

"Well –" she breathed. "I couldn't get you on the phone, and –"

"- and on the day the words _flimsy fucking excuse _were reinvented, we all stood by in awe and watched. Miss me that much, did you?"

"I did _not –"_

He laughed at the transparency of her lie.

"You _did."_

She looked down. Breathed. Looked up at him, for once stripped of all denial –

"Yes."

"Effie –" he groaned, closed his eyes and sighed, brushed the side of her face with brief but breath-taking tenderness – "You can't do this. It's not safe."

Still that unwavering look from her, that made him realise more completely than before how much more there was to Effie Trinket than anyone had ever suspected, even him –

"I don't care."

He shook his head – "_I _care –" _do you know what it would do to me if they found out. If they did anything to you – _"I care about me," was all he said.

"Then I'll just replace your phone and go," she said primly, chin hard set, tried to sidestep him but he caught her arm and her eye and wished for the millionth time, only this time more than ever, that she did not do to him all the things she did.

"_Effie." _He reiterated, in a long sigh – "You're here now –" his hand slid roughly up her arm, turning into a grip she could not escape, his head bending to hers until their foreheads touched – "You think I'd just let you go without getting some use out of you?"

"That is _not _why I came –" she began, but he laughed, turned her around and pushed her back into the wall, face first.

_I love you, god help me, I love you._

"Bitch," he growled, almost affectionately, ripping the stupid dress down to the waist, grinding his cock against her back and squeezing brutal fingers into the soft breasts so easily broken out of the ridiculous corset she was wearing – "Of course it is."

She tried to make her gasp sound like disgust, failing terribly when she arched back against him as she did it – "You want this. This is just a kink to you isn't it? You could take every man in the district and not be satisfied, open those slut legs and let them all in and you'd scream for more and then scream for them to stop. I'd like that. I could get so hard seeing you get raped, see them break that pretty Capitol cunt with their big hard dirty dicks – fuck –"

"You're – disgusting –" she managed – "Get your filthy hands off me."

"Oh sweetheart," he smirked into her neck – "It's the filth you come here for and you know it, you want these _filthy _hands all over your precious skin and more –"

"I do _not –" _

"You're a lying bitch," he murmured almost affably, squeezing her cunt, feeling her, wet through her skirt, ripping it from her, suppressing a hiss at her luscious nakedness and running his hands all over her body in an appreciation he would never voice and she, moaning and squirming and wanting –

"Don't worry," he hissed, voice rough with liquor and lust, roughly yanking at his belt buckle – "I can fuck you enough for twenty men, fill you so full of my _disgusting _seed you'll never feel clean again."

"You only have to touch me for that," she managed to spit back.

He snorted, smirked and thrust into her brutally and without warning and rammed hard when she screamed, shoving her face down into the wall. She wailed as he thrust, hurting her and filling her and snarling how she loved it, calling her every vile name under the sun and they were the sweetest of endearments to her and she came when he did, jerking every last drop of come roughly into her body.

He pulled away from her and watched her whimpering into the wall, so soft and shuddering it stiffened his cock almost at once again just to see her, thinking fuck, she was everything he never wanted to want. Then the tenderness he could not help but feel made him need to be cruel to her and he dragged her by the shoulder, swinging her into his arms –

"More where that came from sweetheart," he growled.

She was so light. He carried her up the stairs, barely feeling it, so fragile to the touch though he knew she was far from fragile, and that awkward, awful feeling tickled at him again. Thankfully she struggled weakly in his arms with a feeble –

"Put me down!" that went straight to his cock, making him rock hard and desperate for her all over again;

"Put you down in a minute princess, give you so much more of what you came for you'll have trouble walking away."

He threw her onto the bed viciously, trying not to see how beautiful she was against the stained and filthy sheets. She noticed, of course, and that precious little wrinkle of disgust made him want to hurt her or kiss her, he was never quite sure which. He was on her, grinding against her before he could start to feel anything like love for her.

"Make me so hard –" he groaned – "So hard, filthy Capitol whore –" shoving into her again, snarling that he'd fuck her all night. She squirmed; he slammed her wrists into the bed. She spat in his face and he slapped her.

"Yeah fight me," he spat – "Make me rape you, you like that." She struggled, weakly, but enough to make him push her down, slam into her harder, pound her into the bed.

"Good," he growled– "Good girl."

She screams. He comes, she follows. It becomes a dance, the steps that repeat over and over until exhaustion calls the music to an end.

-x-

When tiredness came she fell asleep quickly. Never able to fall asleep quickly, he lay up for a long time looking at her. When she started to shiver in her sleep he pulled the covers up and wrapped them around her, when she still shivered he curled heavily around her himself and held her still. No amount of sucking the last dregs from the bottles round the bed would blot out all the fears and nagging feelings anyway.

_I hate you, _he thought as he kissed her shoulder gently, marveling at her softness and perfection – _corrupt and despicable, you are a product of everything I hate most, I hate and despise you and I will do everything in my power to keep you always safe. My Effie. My sweet Effie. _

_x_


	8. Chapter 8

**8.**

That morning Effie awoke to a feeling of remarkable brightness, unhampered by the pale light that barely came in through the grimy window. She smiled to feel her body ache when she stretched and could not suppress a feeling that today was going to be a remarkably good day. She did not know then how good; or that it was to be a stolen hour, a game of a normal life, or a dream that she would store away for years to come.

Haymitch was still snoring, dead to the world; she wondered when he had even fallen asleep. She smiled, and kissed him lightly on the temple. She suppressed the urge that often struck her to hold him frantically close, and wish that just by doing so she could make everything better. She sighed, shrugged and got out of the bed, which, upon further inspection, was disgusting. She felt foul to have ever slept in it. Everywhere she looked, as she got up and travelled downstairs-shivering in a cold the Capitol never got-to where she had left her bag of intact clothes, was the same. Finally she stood dressed, hands on hips, in the travesty that did not even faintly pass for a living room, and declared a determined "Well!" to the world at large. She bit her lip, tied a cloth around her head - since this was a sight no wig deserved to see- and set to work.

Two hours later, Haymitch slouched down, stood numbly in the centre of the room and looked distressed. He squinted at everything, tried to remember what the hell had happened last night and when memory came sliding back it shivered down the spine and trembled the knees. He brushed _that _off and bellowed –

"EFFIE!" at the top of his lungs.

No answer. He tried again, then again, stomping from room to room until he found her, sat delicately at the kitchen table, sipping tea from one of the few nice china mugs that had come with the house and somehow avoided destruction. She simply raised her eyes at him and inclined her head in a superior, slightly questioning manner.

"Effie –" Haymitch spluttered – "What the hell are you still doing here? Why didn't you answer me? The fuck are you wearing and what in the name of all that is fuck have you done to my house?"

"Which one would you like me to answer first?" she replied promptly.

"Never mind, I'll take them in order. I'm here because I won't be missed anywhere else for at least a couple of days. I did not answer you because you did not speak in a decorous manner and I do not respond to such apeish yodelling, thank you _very_ much. I am wearing _Sunset serenade _by Apicata Elise with such alterations as would allow for spring cleaning –"

"Alterations?" Haymitch almost actually laughed. "You look like a crack addled princess in a pantry!"

"Thank you _so much _for your opinion- one day I'm sure to ask it. As for what I have done to your house – if this miserable pile is worthy of the name – you should be falling over your feet – not that that's difficult for you - to thank me," and she took a delicate sip of her tea, flourishing her other hand emphatically as she did so.

"Where's – where's all my stuff?"

"If by stuff you mean filth, I have filled an entire _dozen_ sacks with your foul effluvia and left them behind the house. Any entire articles of clothing have been put in to wash and items of crockery are, excitingly, cleaned and placed into crockery drawers. Honestly, how do you live like this?"

"There's not much call for living around here, princess." Haymitch slumped into a chair opposite her and jabbed the depressingly shiny wood of the table top miserably – "What did you do, get all your little woodland friends to help you?"

Effie tried very hard not to smile but her lip twitched all the same.

"The tea however, is delightful –" she added – "I'd ask if you have such a thing as coffee but I suspect it is far too sobering a substance for you to own – Haymitch, stop staring at that surface as though mourning the loss of your yuck!"

Haymitch sighed heavily;

"Where's the drink?"

"The drink is safe, however today you are going to behave like a human and not a decanter on legs. Have some tea."

"Fuck off."

Effie poured a second cup of tea and pushed it across the table unfazed.

"The hell is this?" Haymitch glared at the tea first, then at her, more seriously – "Effie, the hell are you playing at? Domestic bliss or whatever passes for it in your warped little mind? It ain't that kind of story sweetheart. And what do you mean – decanter on legs?"

"A decanter has but one purpose does it not? To contain alcohol – and you, Haymitch Abernathy –"

"Oh I see. Abuse." But he swallowed some tea, made a face, put it down.

"Fine." He said, half amused, half sulking – "I'll play. What are the rules?"

"I stay."

"Fine. Just today."

"No drink."

"No make up, wigs or other idiocy."

"No lies."

Haymitch frowned but nodded;

"No lies."

"You take a bath."

"You go fuck yourself."

"Haymitch!"

"_Fine._ You go home tomorrow."

"We don't mention the rest of the world."

"Works for me."

"And I love you."

"Hey –" he went deathly still. Her eyes were big and wide and honest and he could not believe she had just dropped that in there. He took her hand fiercely over the table – "Don't say that. Don't you _dare _say that. Ever."

"_No. Lies."_

_"_I mean it Effie, it's not safe, I'll play your game but I won't put you at risk."

"Why am I at risk?"

"Sweetheart it's –" he exhaled a groan, shook his head, eyes closed. When he opened them again she had come over, was half standing over him, half kneeling in his lap and all he could see was her, all he could feel and smell. She smiled and he was lost; it was like every dream of what he could never have that had tortured him into so many angry bouts of alcoholic annihilation. He looked up at her, the sweet smile above the cloud of pink, hating her and hopelessly lost, bewildered on all sides by what he did and did not feel, and what he should and should not, frightened beyond anything he would ever allow himself to feel, let alone admit. But her hands were little and curled against his chest and she was so soft to touch it was sweetly destroying him –

"I have rules of my own -" he murmured, lips against her skin, kissing her arm, hands encircling her waist, sliding beneath the layers of her skirt. She made a _nngh _noise that sounded something like assent;

"I do –" he got it out between kisses – "Whatever I want to you – as long as you're here."

She smiled, arched her back;

"Yes. What else?"

"That was – far as I'd got princess, didn't expect you to say yes."

"I am both surprising and delightful."

"Whatever you say, sweetheart."

The rest was lost to kisses and a day that stretched out before them like a long and luxurious dream.

_x_

**I was gonna write this one day as one chapter like a sensible person but this first half went crack so I'm dividing it into crack and smut sections. :-)**


	9. Chapter 9

**9.**

There are dreams you try to cling to as you feel yourself waking; dreams so sweet, so warm and delightful the sleeping self strains to stay that way, held in the arms of the dream. That day and the night that followed would have been such a dream had it not been for the fact that they were awake through it all.

He made breakfast; she was surprised he even knew how to attempt it. It _was _somewhat burned but she ate it delicately anyway and did not even comment on the fact. He noticed her not comment on the fact, though he had been prepared for her utmost distaste, and he almost smiled so many times just to watch her.

She forced him to listen when she told him where she had put everything. He groaned softly as she trailed him round the house, explaining her exertions of the early morning. He told her she was insufferable, unbearable, abysmal- with increasing light in his eyes. She saw the light and knew that if there was one thing she wanted to do in the world it was to make it shine.

They agreed together not to leave the house; it would probably be risky her being seen.

The fought over who took which side of the sofa. He eventually conceded that the argument was moot since, for a small thing, she had a remarkable talent for taking up the whole space anyway. He found ways to fit his limbs in around her.

It would be fairer to say that the day was interspersed with such moments than that the day was broken up by the instances of sex.

In one such instance, if so long a space of time can so be called, he had first tortured her; kissed down her body, tasting and tantalising her skin into a tingling mess, sucked her nipples into hard dark agony, oh so gently stroked her clit until her hips were bucking and she was begging him to fuck her. Something about the words _please Haymitch, fuck me _in that delicate voice destroyed him, made him incapable of being anything other than abysmally barbaric to her. He got up, pulling her after him.

"Now get on your knees sweetheart and suck my dick; I've waited too long to use your pretty mouth". He laughed at the daintiness with which she went down, the groan because she wanted to be fucked, the effrontery on her face and the blush in her cheeks, rubbed his cock against her face just to see her squirm and when she gasped, started to shove the swollen head into her mouth. She struggled and choked and pulls away –

"I can't –" she groaned – "It's too much, too big –" this just excited him, made him all the more determined –

"You'll take it princess, take every inch –" he held her by the hair, forced it in, inch by brutal inch, snarling to see his own cock disappear into that pretty face, throbbing to feel her choke and the tears and mascara stream down her cheeks. She tried to suck him but her mouth was stretched too painfully and so instead he fucked her face viciously, slapping her face now and then for good measure. When he stroked her throat he could feel his cock bulging inside and it was enough to come savagely, groaning in bliss as her throat contracted and she was forced to swallow and swallow. He held onto her tightly, muttering obscenities as he jerked his cock in her mouth –

"That's it sweetheart, suck me dry, hungry for it aren't you, love the taste of my come –" He groaned to feel her throat work and struggle, coming and coming in her so hard and so much a small trickle of creamy come escaped between the golden lips and when she raised her hands to wipe it off he pushed them down to revel in her humiliation and defilement.

"Fuck yeah –" he grinned, holding her chin up so she could not look away in her shame – "Chins up, smiles on, sweetheart," he mocked, smearing come across her face, his softening cock still in her mouth, groaning with fresh arousal at the thought of defiling her further –

"You give that a good suck now, make me all nice and hard again, make me come and I'll cover your pretty face with it."

He could feel her reticence, see the disgust in her eyes and it hardened his cock without her having to do much at all. This time when he came he made sure to get it all over her face and smirked at her yelp of distress and rapid efforts to wipe it off as soon as he pulled away. He smirked, pulled her down onto the bed with him, lay there for several minutes just breathing before turning to look at her closer than she could cope with in this state

"You'll do that –" he nodded - "whenever I want bitch, or I will drag you out to the whipping post and fuck you in the town square for all to see –"

He grasped her viciously between the legs, and came away sneering –

"Oh that makes you so wet, doesn't it? I'd tie you there, rip off your clothes and rape you over and over until you were screaming and begging for mercy that nobody would ever show to a filthy Capitol bitch like you – _get _your face down bitch –" he wrenched her onto her hands and knees then, stroking her, claiming her with his hands before thrusting into her sudden and hard and rutting in like a beast. She screamed, he gripped her hips and slammed in harder – "You'd scream whore, you'd scream when I took you for the twentieth time, hurt you so much with my cock and when I thrashed your worthless backside until you couldn't stand. Then I'd leave you, naked and dripping in the square until I came back to use you again. God I'd like that; punishing you and getting my own pleasure at the same time – fuck –"

He snarled, leaning into her, to cover her with his body, crush as much of his skin against her as he could reach –

"You feel so good. Such a good little Capitol whore. You'd feel good to rape. Maybe I'd let anyone else who wanted have a go on you, would you like that? All those rough, cruel men using you; they hate you, they'd be so cruel to you if I just let them –"

She closed her eyes, silent now in a bliss beyond screaming and he covered her, completed her, obliterated her and it was all she had ever wanted and he leaned in to whisper into her ear as though imparting the most terrible secret –

"I'd never let them. I'd never let anyone hurt you, sweetheart, nobody else gets to even touch you, you're mine –" the last word hissed out in her ear makes her come almost like a switch turning on and he's with her there, so close and if she could freeze any one moment and live in it for the rest of the year it would be this and it hangs in her mind suspended long after the silent screaming has passed and the shudders have ceased

-x-

"I don't want to go," she says, the morning after, her shoulders drooping as he helps her on with her coat, moving so slowly to let her know the only way he can that he is in no more hurry for her to leave than she is to go. But he snorts instead –

"Effie Trinket, Capitol darling, doesn't want to return to the finery and frippery of home? You'd never stay down here with us plebs, sweetheart."

He says it mockingly but they both know it is intended to strengthen her, know that the rest of the year will be all the harder for having this glimpse at domesticity that can never be made into a life. She wants to retort sharply but her eyes sting and –

"I could –" she says quietly – "Haymitch please, I don't think I can do this –"

Her eyes search his so frantically, so large and trembling he wishes he were less sober; he never heard her voice so broken before, though she does not cry; he has noticed before that even at her saddest she does not cry.

"Yeah you can –" he says, he tries to keep it casual but it won't work with her today, he takes her downcast face and strokes her chin – _chins up, _she reads in the gesture – "Effie you _can._ You have to. You go home, _be _that Darling of The Capitol you play so well and forget the districts, forget the last two days ever happened –"

"I –"

"Yes you can. Don't be a stubborn cow."

She nods;

"I'll play," she says, voice hard – "But I can't forget –" beyond the chill in her voice he reads her eyes pleading as strongly as if she had said it _say something, something to make it easier. _

"_I _will" he says – "I'll have forgotten you by the bottom of the first bottle and don't you doubt it."

He smiles at her, unbearably pained, she smiles back and nods, _lies as usual then _–

"I'm going then," she announces, public voice on again – "And I don't care if I never see you again."

He squeezes her shoulder hard one last time before letting go;

"That's more like it, sweetheart."

_x_


	10. Chapter 10

**Okay, who missed me over Christmas? :-P**

**10.**

The year after, she took one glance at him and realised she could not run the risk of trying to say anything important. He took one sideways glance at her and came to the same conclusion and so that night, when they found themselves alone in her room on the train, they fell together without a word. He was sitting in an armchair staring at the floor and before he knew it she was on him, taking the bottle nimbly from his hand and placing it on the table beside them. Before he knew it, her hand was on his cock and palming him through his trousers. It wasn't necessary, he was already painfully hard. He had been since the first instant in her presence. It was the only way he would ever let her know how difficult it was to go the year without her.

She took control in silence, wrapped herself in the quiet and nothing more as she sank down, impaling herself on his cock. He looked up at her, transfixed by this Effie, this quiet strange creature rising above him, biting her lip until her teeth were stained pink, reaching up to discard her wig, stroke the otter-like softness of her head, thumb gently brushing her cheek. He would have given almost anything not to feel what he caught himself feeling. He would have killed anyone who tried to take it away from him.

She was like a dream then, even coming in that same almost ethereal silence, her hands digging so tight into his shoulders that he later found blood beneath her nails. But in her eyes and the whisper of a kiss she gave before she left he saw a promise, a sad assurance that she would not do this again. That next time there would have to be words.

There were. A world of words, delightful and despicable.

-x-

"Tell me," she said.

"No."

"Tell me."

"No."

"Tell me you missed me."

Eventually he cracked, with his hands around her throat and his cock driving into her desperate body;

"Every minute," he growled in her ear, as though afraid anyone else could hear – "Every drunken second of every fucking day I missed you, with my hands on my cock shouting hate for you as I came. I missed your mouth –" he thrust into her roughly for punctuation – "Your cunt. Your tight little ass. Missed. Using. My. Whore." He came shaking, sweating, flooding her with seed and she screamed, cunt dancing around his cock.

_("I hate you!" she screamed earlier that day – "You're rude, horrible and useless and I hate you!"_

_"__Piss off princess, like your hate is worth shit to me."_

_"__Like you're worth anything to anybody! Did you ever think about that! Did you ever take a look in the mirror Haymitch, or does it hurt too god-damn much?"_

_"__Try it yourself bitch, you'd break the fucking glass."_

_"__At least I don't ignore these poor children. At least I'm half way nice to them!"_

_"__Nice? The hell with you. You don't even remember their names.")_

"I didn't miss _you,_" she said, lying back, breathing hard, glowing – "Not for a second. I had so many nice Capitol boys while I was failing to miss you."

"Did you now." It was not even a question, he knew she hadn't.

"So many," she lied merrily, wickedly desperate to make him jealous, and he wished he did not fall for it so hard, did not so completely hate the thought of anyone even touching her – "I let them touch me everywhere, fuck me again and again, they were so much better than you, so _civilized_ –"

She sighed when he slapped her, so ready for him to do so.

_("What am I supposed to do? You could help. You could give them more. Did you never for one moment think they might not all be dead if you did?"_

_"__Did I never – you're a piece of work sweetheart you know that?"_

_"__Saffron Rivers," she said bizarrely, back at him, too angry to look him in the eye, spitting the words out – "She was twelve, small, dark hair. She was so scared the first evening she was sick in the dining car even before you were. Didn't get past the cornucopia. Rose Meadows, seventeen, couldn't believe she was actually allowed to eat the food here. When she did she got obsessed with strawberries. Then poisoned berries in the arena. Second day. Catelyn Reed – do you want me to go on?"_

_"__Actually, I'd think of begging you to stop.")_

"You don't want civilized –" he sneered, rolling back onto her, squeezing her tits hard enough to bruise and make her cry out, liking her cries and the feel of soft flesh and squeezing harder, cock stiffening against her skin – "You want my coarse rough hands all over you, my big thick _common _cock filling you up, ripping you apart, that's what you want slut, isn't it? _Isn't it?" _he snarled it into her face and she whimpered, legs parting in answer.

"Turn over –" he snarled, manhandling her onto her knees – "Get your fucking face down. I don't want to look at you. Just use you, whore, fill you full of my cock –"

"No –" she whispered, because they both get off on it.

"_Yes_." He shoved in hard – "fuck yes sweetheart, so good, so fucking good –"

_("It doesn't mean anything" he lied – "A decent memory doesn't mean you care. I could tell you the same details. Doesn't make you human enough to care. _You'll_ never_ _be human enough to care. You wouldn't care until it was the name of someone you loved being read out on reaping day."_

_"__Yes well, that's not going to happen so you get to carry on thinking I'm a heartless bitch. Good for you."_

_"__I wish it did happen."_

_"__Would that make you happy?" _

_He snorted –_

_"__I'm long past being made happy.") _

He rammed into her, making her cry; taunted her for crying and fucked her harder, gloating when she whispered that it hurt, hurting her more until she groaned in pleasure. He leaned over her, covering her, kissing her shoulder, hissing in her ear –

"Anyone so much as touched you I'd kill them. Kill them and fuck you until you knew that you were mine –"

He didn't really mean to say the rest but it slips out treacherously and far too tenderly –

"_Mine _Effie, only mine."

He almost came hard enough inside her to obliterate what he said, but not quite.

She doesn't forget it either and files it away in the list of things of which they do not speak.

-x-

The file of Things They Never Said grew longer as the years went on and they sealed it further and further away, getting better and better at not adding anything to it. Her corsets got tighter, he pushed all the boundaries of how much more he could drink, and the years performed a treacherous waltz of lust and lies, bitterness and dead kids. They tried not to talk about it; how every instance they got together also meant two more dead tributes. Then they talked about it and it came out in screaming matches resolved only in feverish angry sex and so never resolved at all.

It seemed the dance would only go on, becoming more bitter, more twisted, until the year finally came that brought the children who did not die.

_x_

**Only a few more chapters left now! Don't be sad though, I've decided to make this the first in a three-part series! Woot? :-)**


	11. Chapter 11

**11.**

When the announcement aired in District Twelve, Haymitch Abernathy destroyed his television in rage at it all. Within minutes Peeta Mellark was at his door, begging and half in tears; beyond the fence Katniss Everdeen charged through the trees and screamed at the sky. Within the hour they had talked and drunk their way through it in some semblance of togetherness.

Miles and miles away in the Capitol, Effie Trinket bit her lip, stared numbly at the screen until the shivering stopped and she could walk calmly, oh so calmly through into the kitchen and set about the mechanical and comforting process of brewing coffee.

In her head, she had done it all. She had roared and raged and smashed her own television screen. She had begged and pleaded for all and any aid. She had denied and refused that this could be happening. She had run out herself and screamed at the same sky. She had seen herself do all these things so clearly they may as well have happened. She had drunk herself under the table with the rest of them.

She did not feel a thing until the coffee scalded her tongue and her hands were still and calm and when she set the cup and saucer back down in their place, the china did not even rattle.

In the weeks that followed she did not think. Did not feel. She barely spoke. She kept it up right until the afternoon of the day before the reaping, two hours before taking the night train out to District Twelve.

-x-

"I can't do this," the words finally came out; not in the scream she felt inside but in a whisper as she sat on the floor, back against the wall, cradling the phone as though it were a child through fingers that shook and arms that ached from the effort of holding it to her ear.

"Yes you can." Haymitch sounded weary, sounded like he'd rather be elsewhere; sounded, if she was not mistaken, strangely sober.

"I _can't," _she heard her voice wobble shrilly and bit her lip hard, afraid that she would cry – "I can't just stand there and read out your name."

"You should maybe worry more about if you didn't –"

"Well what's _that _supposed to mean?"

There was a silence on the other end; she could almost hear him weighing up whether or not to tell her something.

"Doesn't matter," he said – "Anyway, maybe you won't have to. Maybe you'll get Peeta."

"And that's supposed to make me happy? You must think less of me than you've even said."

"Look sweetheart, I really don't think now is the time –"

"Of course it's not the time! It's never the time!"

"Where are you now anyway - shit – Effie, shouldn't you be on the train?"

"Two hours," she sighed, her voice tiny.

"What?"

"It leaves in two hours – well one hour forty eight minutes –"

"Are you ready?"

She looked down at her lap, she was wearing a dressing gown and little else, it was gold with little daisies on the hem. She picked at a daisy miserably.

"No"

"Effie –" Haymitch groaned heavily.

"What if I didn't?" she burst in quickly – "If I wasn't there and there was nobody to read out anyone's name? They couldn't make anybody go then could they?"

"Don't be ridiculous. They'd get someone. _Anyone. _They'd get us to read out each other's names if need be – Jesus –" for the first time she heard a new panic in his voice – "Do you _know _how much trouble you could get into? You have no idea – it's not safe to even say that. Effie get on that fucking train – please."

It was the _please _that did it. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard him use the word before. She got on her feet but she couldn't keep the tears back, even as she moved around the room gathering her things together, holding her phone tight between ear and shoulder.

"Don't go," she said – "Stay with me." She knew she was being selfish; she could only imagine how much worse this had to be for him, she had been beating herself about the head with imagining it ever since the announcement aired.

"I'm here," he said, on the other end, and his voice steadied her, it was low and comforting and it always did – "Not going anywhere". He had _not _been beating himself up these past few weeks thinking about her and it only now occurred to him, somewhat guiltily, that this was worse for her than for him. He had never been more scared than he was at hearing how much more scared she sounded now than she ever had but he pushed it down, pushed it down so hard and so difficult with nothing to swallow it down, pushed it all down to be able to tell her a calming, meaningless litany of reassurance. Eventually he asked her if she was looking suitably ridiculous, and she sniffed hard with the effort of snipping back at him not to be rude.

"It'll be okay," he lied, though it had sunk in on him more and more as he had spoken to her – all those reassurances he did not believe for a moment – just how much trouble she could be in. He had never imagined she would even think of going against the Capitol, of even questioning what she was supposed to do, and it chilled him more than he had known it could to hear so ready to do so. It felt like there were so many people he had to take care of now, so many more lives he had got himself invested in than he had ever wanted. His head swam with it worse than if he had been drinking.

"Are you sure?" He could hear the strength returning to her voice but it did not relieve him as much as it should; not when he wondered how much she was pretending.

"Yeah" he said, swallowing hard – "I'll – I'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," she echoed faintly, putting down the phone as though in a trance. _I have to be strong _she thought – _I have to – for them. _

-x-

If it had not been such a grim occasion Haymitch thought he would have smiled to see her. She really had outdone herself in that ridiculous dress, and her face was so over the top nobody would ever notice she had been crying. He could not help wondering if one false move would send the butterflies scattering from her dress and it was an image that seemed remarkably to fit today – of her just exploding in a shower of butterflies.

But as soon as she started to speak, his heart sank for her. He never thought he would miss the ridiculous, inappropriate and frankly nauseating way in which she usually conducted the reaping ceremony but he found himself thinking _god Effie, please try harder _with every word she spoke. He could see her hand falter over the jar, almost feel her wondering even then if she could just _not – _could see her clearly in his mind just refusing as though that way anybody could be saved. He could see her almost as clearly being the one dragged off by Peacekeepers for trying it. He didn't want to see it, not even in his mind.

To Effie those little slips of paper felt like they weighed a ton. She could see her slow and guilty movements across the stage as though watching someone else perform. However hard her brain shouted at her, its usually trumpeting cry of _smile smile smile you're on camera- _somewhere in her head she was refusing to listen. When she read out Katniss's name the sense of déjà vu almost overwhelmed her at the same time as a weird sensation that she had been hoping it might just read somebody else.

Moving on to the second bowl had been like waiting for the second ear to get pierced. There was not enough time, not enough of anything to steel her for it and it was the culmination of years of nightmares to see his name on the slip. She thought at first her voice would fail her and when it did work it came out in a rushing sigh, and _that's it, _she thought, _now I've sentenced you to death and what will you ever think of me now? _She had thought those nightmares rested strictly in the realms of the impossible, it was beyond surreal to live it and she rather thought she might faint. Even though she never fainted, not in the tightest of corsets. She wished she could. She didn't want to feel this, didn't want to hear them argue over who got to die, didn't want that second of relief to hear Peeta volunteer. When they saluted the crowd she wanted to salute with them.

It was all over too fast to process. She wasn't sure she even _should _process this living nightmare of a moment. Wasn't sure she was going to get out of this one unscathed – they'd been live on camera for goodness sake, and she was almost certain her inability to conduct this ceremony in her habitual manner would have been noticed and disapproved. Wasn't sure, as they were hurried away, if she could keep standing, keep going, not until a hand touched the small of her back, rough and gentle all at once and a voice close to her ear murmured –

"It's okay sweetheart, you did fine."

It was a comfort, having someone to share her headspace, even as it occurred to her that he had never lied to her so much over the course of any one day, ever in the last twenty years.

_x_

**I'm not sure this bit is any good, cause I didn't really want to just rehash bits of canon but that's kinda the point this story is up to now and it's too important a series of events to just leave out I figure. On the plus side it made my beta tear up so it can't be too sucky. Reassure me people, I'm a fragile Capitol butterfly. :-)**


	12. Chapter 12

**12.**

The night before the Quarter Quell he found her in front of her mirror, blinking furiously and cursing her eyelashes. He had wanted to follow her straight away; it had alarmed him far too much to see her like that, so visibly struggling in front of the children. _What are we? _He thought –_a fucking family? _He remembered with a jolt how strained she had sounded _we're a team aren't we? _And it occurred to him that maybe _family _was the word she had been searching for all along.

"Oh, these silly things," she said, too loud and too high, when she heard him come in. She was trying to flick away a set of lashes that had become stuck to her finger. He had never heard her say a word against any of her idiotic accessories before. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed gently.

"I'm _fine," _she said, looking down.

"Effie," he chided, kneeling down beside her, turning her face to his; her face was streaked raw and flaky, tears trapped in the remaining eyelash that listed fluttering to one side. He peeled it off for her, so gently, before she could get distressed all over again.

"Really –" she insisted into his upturned face – "I'm fine. You should be with them."

"I should be with you," he replied simply.

"My face –" she shook her head –

"Is a mess. I can see." He smiled at her and she could not be sad, hearing how fondly he said it. She did not even wriggle or object when he gently started taking a make-up wipe to the wreck her face had become through her tears.

"You look better like this anyway," he said.

"Oh for goodness sake Haymitch –" she tried to make it sound a typical exasperated snap but it came out as a sigh – "You are and always have been ridiculous – look at me –" she turned away, unable to keep it up, glaring into the mirror for the millionth time in her life – "Even my face is falling apart. What good can I be to anyone?"

"Sweetheart –" he took her arm, gently but allowing no room for resistance, turning her back to face him – "You're going to be a lot of help where a lot is needed soon enough."

"Haymitch –" she whispered, finally, after months of wanting to ask, seizing the courage to do so – "What the _hell _is going on?"

"What do you mean?" but he looked shifty and that was enough for her.

"Something is happening – _in the Districts –" _she whispered this last, afraid they could be overheard – "I'm not stupid – ever since the victory tour there's been something going on – and we've all seen the new peacekeepers on the screens – treating people so _horribly –" _she whispered this too, knowing it was not was she was supposed to think – "I saw _you _– defending that boy. The footage cut out before – before –" her face crumpled again – "I was so _worried _about you – and them – and now none of you will tell me _anything _and – and the Games begin tomorrow and I _know _something is going on and why won't you –"

She was not sure whether to be annoyed or delighted when he suddenly and abruptly kissed her, taking both of her tensely balled fists in his hand. All these years waiting for a sign that he actually really cared about her, and now seemed like the most awkward time to suggest it and then he held her face so gently in one hand, thumb gently stroking her cheek and his eyes were so terribly afraid looking up at her that her heart beat fast for fear.

"Effie –" he said gently, so gently it did not calm her in the slightest – "It's best if you don't know –"

"Then there's something to know?"

"Sweetheart trust me, the less you know the better – I can't say the next few days won't get a little weird and I'm not necessarily gonna be around to keep you safe –"

"Fuck –" she said – it always sounded strange coming out her mouth and she startled herself with it. She stood up, jerkily, pulling her hand out of his – "It's serious isn't it? Why would I not be safe? Where are you going? What the fuck is going on?"

Haymitch groaned, standing up –

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was easier when you didn't seem to care."

"Of _course _I care!" she snapped – "Why is this suddenly a bad thing?"

"I just don't want to see you get hurt –" he was almost shouting by now and she hissing back –

"Why are you _so _damn sure I'm going to get hurt?"

"Have you _seen _my track record with people I love?" he snapped, too quickly to stop it coming out of his mouth. He did not make it better by colouring up instantly, looking down and muttering "Fuck" under his breath.

"You – what?" she wasn't going to let it go now it had finally been thrown out there, even if it had been a mistake.

"Shut up Effie," he growled, not looking at her – "Shut the fuck up" – trying to turn away but she took his arm, hand floundering but he took hold of her wrist, grasping for her, flailing like he was drowning, clutching at her, doing only what instinct demanded as he scrabbled at her clothes and then her skin, pushing her back onto the bed and kissing her feverishly and she surrendering because her body ordered her to even though there was still so much she needed to know. But she needed him more than knowledge, she always had and this was different; _why _she thought, _why when it was me that ran off to cry are you the one that's breaking? _But he fixed himself as he had been fixing himself for years, hard and wanting, driving inside her urgently, whispering assurances that he hated her more fervently than ever before. But it was different this time, she felt it in everything, in the desperate way he stroked her skin, in the blaze in his eyes that did not want to meet her face but met her eyes all the same, guilty and on the edge of tears.

The assurances that he hated her fell as thick and fast as he fucked her, but the memory of what he had just about said rang around them louder than words and when he slammed into her snarling with a hand around her throat – _worthless bitch I hate you, you're nothing to me, nothing – _his voice cracked and the tears spilled from his eyes to her face and for a moment he thought he really could kill her rather than have to feel this so hard. She felt the shudders run down his back as she curled a hand around his neck and he came in her hard on a final –

"I hate you so fucking much –" his forehead dropping to hers as she stroked his neck and whispered, whether she should or not –

"It's alright, it's okay, I love you too – I –" but he was still inside her and his fingers stroked her clit, driving her to a shuddering orgasm before she could dare repeat such a thing.

He took her again as soon as he could, rather than have either of them let lose all the words and explanations that needed to be said so dreadfully. Still, she looked at him before she fell asleep with such sweetness and trust that his chest clenched painfully.

He watched her for a while as she slept. There was gold dust shimmering around her head and shoulders, fallen from her wig when it had come off. It illuminated her with a fine shimmering outline and he wondered how he could first do everything in the world to her and then be almost too in awe to touch her. Almost. It seemed to him then that she had always been gold, the one shining thing in his life. He kissed her just above the ear and squeezed her shoulder with rueful tenderness wishing, he did not have to leave, afraid for her beyond measure, afraid for them all.

Finnick looked at him curiously when they spoke in the early hours of that morning but knew better than to ask about the gold dust on his fingers; it lingered on his skin and on his lips all the way to District Thirteen.

_x_

**Is that a horrible place to end this story? Eh never mind, sequel's coming really soon, gonna cover events of and before ****_Mockingjay _****(Needless to say I'm going with movie version of events since Effie was hardly in the book and that's lame. :-) )**

**I'm so sorry I kept you all hanging on this last chapter! Had to go to my parents for a week which is just not inductive to writing. On the plus side I think I converted half the family to Hayffie. :-P**

**Ugh, and I suck at titles so don't know what the sequel's gonna be called yet. Willing to take suggestions! :-)**


End file.
